And by the time they left Saturday afternoon, the Appleton Museum of Art sported three new "sculptures" made entirely from cans of food and soda ranging from white hominy and creamed corn to Pepsi, Coke and Dr. Pepper. A fourth figure was built Monday by museum staff members.

Four creations — a Rubik's Cube, the U.S. flag and Olympic rings, an octopus and a 10-foot replica of robot B-9 from TV's "Lost in Space" — are the focus of "Canstruction Ocala 2014," a first-time exhibit here that is part art, part community service. It opens with a special preview party at 6 p.m. Friday and to the public at large during regular museum hours beginning Saturday.

Once the exhibit concludes March 9, the thousands of cans of food used to create the structures will be given to food banks in the three counties served by the College of Central Florida, which operates the Appleton: Brother's Keeper in Marion, Daystar Life Center in Citrus and Tri-County Outreach in Levy. The total poundage will be announced at the Friday preview.

Cindi Morrison, director of the museum, mused on the canstruction under way in the lobby and rotunda.

"It looks easy, but it's not," she said. "It's not just stacking up cans, but it's gravity, engineering, what the cans look like when they're all stacked up together."

Each team was assisted by a local architect and engineer or contractor.

Nevertheless, more than once the young builders learned the effect of gravity on can-stacking, the hard way, she added. "I wish I'd had my steel-toed shoes on when the cans on our sculpture fell over."

Folks have been canstructing for more than 20 years all over the world.

According to the Canstruction website, the initiative was launched in 1992 by members of the Society for Design Administration as a way "to unite the design, engineering and construction industry through a unique and fun medium that would provide canned food to hunger relief organizations."

Since then, Canstruction exhibits have been held in museums and malls in more than 150 cities worldwide, and have donated more than 21 million pounds of food to food banks and kitchens.

It's probably natural that the team from the Cornerstone School would build a robot out of cans; the non-parochial private school is a leader in robotics education in the lower grades. And the iconic robot from the 1960s television series — "danger, Will Robinson, danger" — was an ideal fit.

"It's a canned-food drive, obviously, but it's a cool thing to put a robotic spin on it," said Joe Moseley, the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) coordinator at Cornerstone. "Usually, when you do a canned-food drive, people bring cans and you say, 'thank you.' But we needed very precise cans."

Which meant, he added, the Cornerstone students had to learn the science of cans — sizes, mass, how much weight they can support. Once secured, each can was meticulously wrapped in a black or silver covering because the labels are not supposed to be damaged in any way.

"I'm amazed we're able to pull this off, given the short amount of time we had," said Cornerstone eighth-grader Jon Perry. "But it shows what we can do."

Girl Scouts from Troop 281 at St. John Lutheran Church learned that proper stacking was crucial to building their Rubik's Cube.

"You have to be patient when stacking the cans," said Sarah Milbrandt. "You don't want them to fall over and ruin the project."

Some cans, they learned, are designed to easily "nest" when stacked, while others aren't. And while the "nested" cans are a bit more stable, they also make a shorter stack than the others — a factor the girls had to account for in creating their cube, added troop leader Lynn Tomich.

Meanwhile, CF students with the Student Activity Board learned that sometimes even nesting cans can topple; they had to move their U.S. flag of Pepsi, Coke and Dr. Pepper cans to a building support in the lobby to help support their cans. Later, they had to redo the flag's blue field because they'd started it one stripe too high.

"We thought it would be challenging," said freshman Erin Peterson. "But it's an experience to learn how to work together as a team, and how to make things more stable."

Morrison said shopping also was critical in the Canstruction creations, not only to get the right size cans but also the correct color of labels and securing enough to finish. So if there's been a shortage of creamed corn, green beans, diced tomatoes and black beans on grocery shelves lately, this is why.

The Appleton octopus mostly will be created from tins of tuna, sardines and salmon, Morrison said.

Their first practice build "looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa," she said.

"Oh, how cool is this," exclaimed Patty Bawza, a visitor from Connecticut, as she walked into the Appleton on Saturday amid a bustle of building. "This is phenomenal what the kids are doing. It's just so awesome to see these children participating in this experience."

Contact Rick Allen at rick.allen@starbanner.com or 867-4154.

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